Your employees don't accept t-bills as payment. Your suppliers don't accept them either. To do business, you need money in a bank account. Not all your money, but a decent chunk of money needs to be there for day to day.

Sure, you need some, but many small businesses leave it all in a bank. It's easy to just set up recurring buys of 4 week t-bills that you can halt at any time, payroll is predictable, and suppliers are commonly on net 30-90.

Yup, and you stop using a bank which is in trouble.

Employees will take risky stuff like equity as payment, but the IRS won't take it for their payroll taxes.

The number of employees who take equity as a significant portion (>50%) of their comp rounds to zero.

I wouldn't want to get paid in equity if the IRS didn't accept it for tax payments either. If you accept 100% of your compensation in equity you are bankrupt because you can't pay your taxes.

This is a chicken and egg situation.

I take 10% of my salary in an equity IOU (ESPP) and I'd do more if they'd let me. But they only let execs into the deferred compensation plan.

Not after hyperinflation